Sports. Honestly. Since 2011

Anthem’s Ed Nordham: “We’re Investing in the Company”

Anthem Vice President Ed Nordham, who oversees Global Force Wrestling for the company, recently spoke to Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez on the Wrestling Observer Radio program to quell the rumours that Anthem was considering getting out of the pro wrestling business and selling GFW. He also responded today to a fan who inquired if Anthem would be interested in acquiring Lucha Underground, should that company’s financial troubles be accurate.

On the rumours of the sale of GFW following the Sports Illustrated article:

People who are talking that we’re selling the company, that’s wrong. We’re investing in the company, we’re investing every month. Some things that don’t work, you let them go by. If we have to invest where we can see there’s a revenue opportunity off it and that revenue line, it may not be here today but you can see it’s worth the money spent to get there, then we’ll do it.

About the Jeff Jarrett situation:

Jeff brought in some good young guys – Sonjay Dutt and Scott D’Amore – they’re guys who are totally plugged into the independent wrestling scene and the Japanese wrestling scene and the style of wrestling that’s selling today, so frankly – and as unfortunate as it is that Jeff’s not available to us right now, his lieutenants are there, they’re excited to have their moment in the sun, they’re going to pick up the ball and run with it. I think you’ll see somewhat of a different style, they’re more tuned into an action style of wrestling and probably a little less talk and a lot more action…fundamentally that’s probably the biggest change in the short term. I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself, because I’m hopeful that Jeff isn’t gone long.

Goals going forward to improve Global Force Wrestling:

Number one, make it profitable. It is a challenging business and candidly, perhaps a little bit more complicated than we realized when we decided to go from being just a broadcast company to being the content creation business, as hardcore as this this. But we knew coming in, that the company had lost a lot of money last year, it was losing money when we took it and we didn’t have any misapprehensions that just because we put our name on the door that suddenly it was going to be profitable, that it would be a process. You know, it’s been a year, there’s been lots of things, we’re just trying to knock them off, breaking big rocks into little rocks, and my objective is at every taping, every quarter, that we’ve accomplished something that is moving us closer and closer to a break even position. You know that there’s two ways to get there, one is to get more revenue and the other one is to have less cost, and find the spot in between. We’re obviously needing to grow revenue but it’s no surprise that revenue isn’t going to appear overnight. That’s a process of rebuilding the brand and rebuilding the audience, and the dollars will follow. In the meantime, just looking for ways to incrementally reduce our cost and find more efficient ways to do things, find more interesting ways to do things. You’ll see that at every taping, we’ll do something a little bit different, and we’ll try things, what’s working, what’s not working. Reassess and retool. 

Expectations of GFW Becoming Profitable:

Years to be break even? No. We had a view that we should work as hard as we can to break even as fast as possible, recognizing that it’s not going to happen overnight. We don’t have a specific “by this date, this milestone gets made or this milestone gets done”, no.

On Twitter today, a fan asked Nordham if Anthem would be interested in acquiring Lucha Underground, another promotion/show that has been rumoured to be in trouble.

 

You can hear Ed Nordham’s entire conversation with Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_oyQ0k1_ag&feature=youtu.be

Share:

More Posts

Send Us A Message